


Unending Virtue

by GeminiLoveCA



Series: Virtue [3]
Category: Crimson Peak (2015)
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-20
Updated: 2015-10-20
Packaged: 2018-04-27 07:16:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5038942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GeminiLoveCA/pseuds/GeminiLoveCA
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not even death itself will stop her...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unending Virtue

The pain of the chisel surprised me. I knew pain, but this ran deeper than anything I had felt in many years. Not since Lady Beatrice’s days…

I looked down at myself, the handle of the chisel protruding just to the side of my breast. In her rage, Edith had struck quite true. The blade had slid between my ribs, the tip all but touching my heart. I looked into her eyes, so close to mine.

Horror filled them. Horror at her actions. Horror even perhaps at the sensation of the flesh parting under her hand. She fell back a step, the same hand that had struck her fatal blow now covering her mouth.

I heard Sir shout my name, torn between catching the wife who wavered on her feet, or his mortally-wounded lover. I made the decision for him. My name came with even more desperation as my hand closed over the handle, pulling the blade out. He winced at the sound of suction as the air rushed into the wound. I dropped the blade at her feet.

“Oh, dear Edith. Did you really think I was that easy to be rid of?”

I felt my Sir grab my shoulders, his hands rending my dress, baring the throat that no longer bore the bruises of his mouth and fingers, the breast that lay whole just beneath. He spun me wildly, ripping the dress from my back, which was now also unmarred.

“I don’t… what manner….”

“She’s dead, Thomas. She’s dead….” Edith cried from the floor, drawing his attention from me. Her eyes met mine, and I saw in them the horrid reflection, the true image of me that she saw. I laughed as she cringed, scooting herself backward along the floor.

“No, it’s not possible.”

“Oh, but it is. Does that make it better, missus? Or worse?” I knelt down to her level. “I told you I would never leave Crimson Peak.”

My Sir shoved me away, pulling Edith to his side. In his eyes, I saw myself as a monster, though I could not look away. “Come, Edith, let’s get you away from here.”

She fought at him, protesting his touch, even in her shock too incensed at his betrayal.

“Oh come now, missus… It could be worse. He could have taken a flesh and blood lover… And really, I’ve been his for too many years to count. Be glad I shared his company this much!” I cackled as he dragged her away.

~~~

I had long dreaded Sir finding out this secret, but it became a liberation. His knowledge allowed me to slip free of the prison of the flesh, and flit the house in abandon. I let my laugh ring among the rafters, fingers trailing the dusty crystals of the chandeliers so they tinkled merrily in my wake. Flowing with preternatural swiftness, I came to Lucille’s room, allowing myself to take back a form as I stopped by her fireplace.

“I ought to have noticed,” she comment, her voice as dry and sharp as the chisel had been. “My brother was ever hard on his toys as a child. Why would I presume you to be any different?”

“Your brother didn’t kill me, Lucille.”

“I didn’t assume so. But you can’t say his attentions didn’t contribute.” She turned to look at me over her shoulder. “He’ll never come to you now.”

I grinned. “He will. He always comes back. Crimson Peak is his home.”

~~~

Incorporeal, I hovered in the bedroom, watching as Sir all but forced a dose of laudanum down Edith’s unwilling throat. The soporific took effect quickly, and in her state, she seemed to see me, mumbling my name as Sir tucked her into bed. She clutched at the bedding and his wrist, begging him not to leave her with my spectre in the room. He hushed her, pressing a kiss to her forehead before retreating.

I met him in his study. He passed me as he walked to the decanter, pouring a glass of whiskey, his eyes never leaving the amber fluid. “How long?”

I shrugged. “A decade. Perhaps a bit more. I’ve begun to forget.” A lie, but what is one more on top of my list?

His tumbler hit the top of the desk with a slam, the expensive liquor sloshing onto his cuff. “Do not test me by lying, Virtue.”

Odd how he always seemed to see through all my falsehoods, at least the minor of them. “I preceded your mother in death by twenty-two days.”

He stared at me, his mouth slightly agape. “And no one thought this might be of interest to me?”

“Do you really see Lady Beatrice capable of even that kindness?”

“And you didn’t bother to tell me when I arrived home for her funeral?”

“As I recall, I hardly had the chance. “ My Sir’s life had been rent asunder. His forced withdrawal from University, Lady Beatrice’s demise and the collapse in the mine had all come within a quick time. My death was but a small detail in the grander scheme. When he had come to me, gripped in fear and uncertainty, needing some creature comforts to right his wildly spinning reality, who was I to turn him away, even in death?

I reached out a hand to him, only to see him shift his shoulder away. “Let me see you, Virtue.”

I shook my head. “It’s not a thing worth viewing, Sir…”

“Let me see you. Now.”

I inhaled at the command, feeling the collected vapors of me reform, remolding into the form I had worn on the day I was last alive. His nostrils flared, jaw clenched, as I stared back at him placidly. I did not need to see myself in his eyes to know I was a fright. I had seen my own corpse through its disposal, hovering helplessly above it in terror and confusion.

I did not like this form. Not at all. The fatal blows had all but caved in the side of my skull, rendered me blind in one eye, the limbs on the opposing side hanging limp and useless. I had fought my attacker to the bitter end, though it had done me little good. I turned my head, presenting Sir with the unruined side of my face, vain even now. “Have you seen enough?”

“Yes.”

I let myself take back my body, whole and unblemished, reaching for my Sir, only to feel him recoil. I stepped closer. “Nothing has changed.”

“Everything has changed, Virtue. Do not touch me!” Disgust twisted his features. “You reek of the grave.”

“That’s your imagining, Sir. I would need a grave to stink of one.”

“Stop prevaricating! You are well aware of my meaning.” He stepped backward, distancing us. “Get from my sight.”

“You cannot mean that.”

He shoved a hand through his locks, fixing me with a wild look. “BEGONE!”

A great wail echoed through the house, guttering the candles and gas lamps and making the very walls shriek as if in agony. It took a moment for me to know this sound came from the rending of my own, black heart. Dissolving, I hied myself away, swirling with anguish and rage about the servants’ quarters, tossing objects to hear them shatter until Polly ran away in tears.

Foolish, foolish heart! How fickle is the man I loved!

~~~

For days, Sir has refused to acknowledge me. He has not allowed Lucille or Edith to even speak my name in his presence, fearing, and rightly so, that I am attuned to its sound. He has all but groveled to Edith, blaming our indiscretions on a lapse of reason, a rekindling of a long-burnt out flame of affair. In my wrath, I drove several of his tools to imbed themselves in the walls of his workshop. It took him the best part of a day to wrench them free.

That conniving upstart had the temerity to suggest that I would leave if I were lain truly to rest, my remains given a “proper and Christian burial”. It made me laugh. I wished them much success in their endeavor. This house has many secrets, the least of which was my “resting place”.

Lucille was reluctant to assist. She did not hamper their efforts, but her contributions were grudging. It helped that many a late evening, I heard her beckoning me with a whisper. I came, giving her the cold comfort of the company her brother now denied. Dry-eyed, she admitted to me that Thomas’s marriage was now deeply strained – both by his infidelity and the tension of my “ghoulish” presence and he was sullen and withdrawn from her in attempts to amend matters with his bride. Though Thomas knew now that his sister had also been unaware of my demise, having been accompanied by their aunt to London that year, Edith remained unconvinced. She was of a certainty that the siblings had concocted the circumstances in an effort to drive her mad, as either insane or dead herself, they would have control of her father’s fortune.

Lucille made no protest at the chill in my touch as I caressed her, so hungry for any type of affection, especially now that her last relative had turned his shoulder on her. She clasped me close as we lowered ourselves to her bed and I expelled my madness on her softly curving form. When I felt her breath upon my lips, I could pretend, almost… so like my lost Sir…

After, I had no further pretense to pretend to dress, choosing to reform myself closer to the fire, watching the way the flames licked at the tips of my fingers, delighting in the singing pain of it. I could hear her heart’s pain even before she spoke. “He will leave me. She will take him away from this house once they find you, Virtue.”

“They won’t.”

Tears shone in her eyes as she stared into the fire. “Do you remember how close Thomas and I were as children? Inseparable.”

I nodded. Twins they’d been, a few years older than I, but I heard the whispers as servants and their children often do. The labor with them had been protracted and painful, having nearly lost them both at one point or another. Lady Beatrice had nearly died herself, and had always been aloof, perhaps blaming her children for her lingering ill health afterward.

Her lips tilted up in a self-deprecating quirk. “We shared a womb and later, a nursery. I have never felt as close to anyone and I never shall again. I have no dowry, nothing to offer any man, even my innocence. Thomas will leave and live a life of luxury somewhere, and I will be the hateful old spinster, condemned to die alone and lonely as this house collapses around my head. How is it that God can be so cruel? What grievous sin did I commit?”

“Nothing, Lucille.”

“Is it that I simply want someone of my own? That sense of connection?”

I floated to her side, “No.” I reached for her, but my hand passed through hers. Though being near her gave me energy, it was Sir that gave me true life. Cut off from him, I was weaker and unable to remain corporeal for as lengthy a period.

Lucille gasped. Drawing back, she rubbed her fingers. The look she gave me was one of wonder and surprise, delighted. “You’re so warm when you do that. Can you again?”

I held out my arm, allowing her to place hers above it, until her physical body and my spirit occupied the same space. For me, it was an odd sensation: tingling all over, hot and cold at once. Lucille laughed in delight, which save for some random moments of ecstasy, was a sound I had not heard from her in decades.

She flopped back upon the bed, her limbs flung in each direction. “Virtue, lie down on me.” When I moved next to her side, she shifted, forcing our forms to align exactly. I gasped. Eyes open, I felt… alive. A heart beat wildly in my breast and I was conscious of every breath, the pulse thrumming in my ears, the fabric against my skin. So stunned was I that I was flung from Lucille with a jolt, my form diaphanous and too weak to move.

“Oh, Virtue.” Her hand lay over her heart. “That… is miraculous, and addictive.” She licked her lips. “Once you regain your strength, we must do that again!”

And so it became routine. For want of a name to call it, Lucille deemed our behavior akin to a horse and master, and thus began a habit of me “riding” her about the house. It took coordination, a certain give and take, to control her body, her speech and mannerisms, so as not to give away my presence. I learned in private mostly, and I was sure that Lucille would die of apoplexy the first time I led us in front of Thomas and Edith.

In her room late that night, she laughed with me until she wept, her joy at our prank dissolving as she realized that her brother, her twin, did not know her so well that he could not distinguish when it was I speaking or her. Still, she could not stop. She claimed that only when my spirit rode upon her body did she feel any sense of completeness, of totality.

For me, I was simply happy to feel. For too long, the only sensation I felt was pain, craving that pain to the point it became bliss, an escape from the unceasing banality of death. To my surprise, the more I joined Lucille within her body, the stronger I became at it, the more in control. The greater my control, the more Lucille acquiesced. Soon, she was content to ride along somnambulant and quiet, as I went about the day.

It made it easy to resume poisoning Edith, especially since I no longer felt a particular concern to keep Thomas’s food and drink separate.


End file.
